RNU (ASX) General Discussions

Originally posted by riseabove: ↑

More about our partners, Sicona who have attracted some big name funds to to help finance the pilot plant:

PE player Riverstone makes first Aussie VC investment

Anthony Macdonald and Yolanda Redrup
Aug 11, 2021 – 9.32pm

New York-based PE buyout firm Riverstone Holdings is branching out from its usual big dollar deals and establishing a venture capital arm, and has placed one of its first early stage bets on Aussie battery materials technology company Sicona.

Founded in 2000, Riverstone invests in energy services, power and infrastructure and has raised in the range of $US38 billion across multiple funds.

Sicona co-founders Andrew Minett and Christiaan Jordaan have scored funds from Riverstone, Artesian and SDGx Ventures. It made a name for itself in Australian circles when its affiliated blank cheque company Decarbonization Plus Acquisition II announced a deal with Brisbane-based electric vehicle fast-charging technology company Tritium, to take it public on the NASDAQ via a SPAC (special purpose acquisition company). The deal gives Tritium an enterprise value of about $2.2 billion.

The investment in Sicona is unusual for the multinational PE firm, which usually leads investment rounds in the hundreds of millions. In 2017, it co-led a $US600 million equity round in oil and gas explorer Admiral Permian Resources, and it also co-led a $C295 million equity financing round in Vesta Energy.

Sicona was founded in 2019 by Christiaan Jordaan, before adding Dr Andrew Minett to its leadership team in early 2020. The business develops next-generation battery technology used in the anodes (negative electrodes) of lithium-ion batteries. It utilises silicon and graphite, and it is in the early phases of scaling up its manufacturing facilities.

The business won the attention of Riverstone because its current generation silicon-graphite composite anode materials deliver more than 50 per cent higher capacity than conventional graphite-only materials, for a comparable cost. This is appealing to companies such as Tesla, Samsung and LG, which are all trying to find ways to extend the capacity of batteries.

Other investors in its $3.7 million capital raise include Artesian, Chaos Ventures, Bandera Capital, and Jeremy Liddle’s climate tech fund SDGx Ventures.

The Startmate alumni is currently building a pilot manufacturing facility in Wollongong, which will let it produce kilogram-scale batches of its materials, ahead of scaling up production.

It had planned to build a commercial-scale manufacturing facility in Europe, but thanks to the border restrictions with the COVID-19 pandemic, it is now considering also establishing a larger manufacturing facility in Wollongong, which would cost in the range of $30 million to build and produce 1000 tonnes a year.

“We have a high degree of confidence in the public market supporting us to achieve that goal,” Jordaan said.

“There are investors in Australia, but even more in the US. It’ll cost $20 million to $30 million to get a plant up that’s profitable and making revenue, which isn’t a lot compared to bigger name competitors (like Sila Nanotechnologies) in the US who have raised billions.

“We’re on a similar path to Novonix. They did a commercial demo at 500 tonnes.”

https://www.copyright link/street-talk/pe-player-riverstone-makes-first-aussie-vc-investment-20210811-p58hs3

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Silicon still has many technical issues that create instability and reduce the lifespan of the battery. Many companies are working on overcoming these problems and working out ways of incorporating silicon into either natural graphite or synthetic graphite as well.

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